The following Christmas, machine gun barrages were deliberately timed to drown out any sound of carol singing to prevent spontaneous truces happening again.
Makes my heart ache reading that. It’s good that soldiers still saw the humanity in others on that day in 1914.
And a lot of effort was put in to ensure it would never happen again.
“It lifted astoundingly quickly. And along that line we were suddenly able to see Germans doing exactly the same thing all out in the open. And we just looked at each other for some time and then one or two soldiers went towards them. They met, they shook hands, they swapped cigarettes. They got talking. The war, for that moment, came to a standstill.” General Walter Congreve, who led the Rifles Brigade, wrote to his wife on Christmas Day, describing the ceasefire as “an extraordinary state of affairs”. Because the trenches were so close, soldiers were able to shout greetings to each other, initiating conversations. “A German shouted out that they wanted a day’s truce and would one come out if he did,” wrote the general. “Very cautiously one of our men lifted himself above the parapet and saw a German doing the same. Both got out, then more… they have been walking about together all day giving each other cigars and singing songs.”
I don’t get this. This sounds like people were there for a job, but otherwise harbored no ill will towards the enemy. Or maybe they did, but it being Christmas and all, they really just wanted to carol and smoke cigars? What was the point of going back to the war with someone you just sang carols and smoked with?
They went back to war, because they feared punishment. Even the christmas truce didn’t repeat itself. The officers quickly made sure of that. Remember, this was the first year of the war too.
Ultimately, very rarely does a regular person want to go to war. They want to live a peaceful life, unbothered by anyone, doing their stuff. This truce came about because people were so close, that when they started singing carols, the other side sang the same ones, in their language. That is enough to make you stop and think “wait, those are people in there, same as us”.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong but there wasn’t any underlying idology in play, like with Nazis is WW2. So it wasn’t as “good vs evil”.
The German army was conscripted and the British soldiers of the day were men sold on the idea of traveling the world and becoming a hero or a ‘true man’ by cutting down their nations enemies in noble warfare.
It basically was just a job at the start of the war for many. They shot at the enemy because they were soldiers and that’s what soldiers do.
But when their officer told them “You’ll be shot for dereliction of duty” they went back to fighting.
WW1 was a senseless and sad war, driven by the desires of aristocrats.
It’s well documented that the leadership of both sides had some difficulty getting their soldiers to go back to fighting after the truce.
The average soldier did not want to fight. Leadership had to threaten charges of desertions and treason to get them back to fighting.
modern people are able to so easily access excellent multimedia propaganda nowadays that just isnt needed anymore
Hate is so easy to propogate with film
And almost impossible without it
An interesting book somewhat related to this is Poilu, the notebooks of a French soldier who served through most of the war. He was an avowed socialist who never fired his weapon at the enemy and encouraged the soldiers under him (when he was a corporal) to do the same. One of his stories was about a period later in the war when the soldiers on both sides of the trenches in his area had reached an “accommodation” where they refused to shoot at each other. One day a high-ranking officer visited, saw the situation, picked up a soldier’s rifle and shot dead an enemy soldier lounging in full view across no-man’s land. This precipitated a resumption of “normal” warfare in the area but almost got the officer killed - by his own soldiers.
Mate can you show me the way?
Paul McCartney looks tired.
What if they had a war and no one came?
For the people who said “fuck this” it lasted for decades
If anyone is interested, Sabaton (a metal band) have made a song about it, “Christmas truce”. It is rather touching…
Or
